Moonlit Sonata

Sleight at the Museum

Approved, feel free to move the sheet to the Characters tab.

Sleight at the Museum

A question: I know we're playing thieves and all but would someone who is, say, a practitioner of confidence tricks fit the bill? Which is a roundabout way of asking if a con man counts as a thief in this manner.

@Fabricant451

Sure, if you can put together a reason for them to have been working with the client/why they'd be selected for this sort of job~

Sleight at the Museum (Modern Fantasy, Thieves in a Magic Museum)

OOC is up. Those who have expressed interest already, as well as any newcomers, should feel free to ask questions and post character sheets there~

Sleight at the Museum

Welcome to Meade, recently voted by the annual Archmages Magazine survey as the best town for those seeking to start a career in the up-and-coming arcane industry.

You are a member of the criminal underground, an art thief whose eyes are set on the Museum of History and the Arcane Arts that is slated to open next weekend. More specifically, you've been hired by a past client to steal the crown jewel of the museum and magnum opus of the legendary painter Hel'AvRen von Entray-Yezediah: The Divine Silence. Of course, if you manage to get away with anything in addition to The Divine Silence, your client is happy to take it off your hands as well, but they're after The Divine Silence first and foremost.

Put simply, pull this job off, and you'll be one of the richest people in the country.

Of course, a priceless painting such as The Divine Silence will no doubt have plenty of security around it, even if the museum's yet to open. Naturally, your client has seen that as cause to hire a few other thieves; maybe you know them from past jobs, maybe not, but you're all professionals, so there shouldn't be an issue there. Everyone gets an even cut of the final turnout. Break into the museum, steal the painting, grab what other things you can, get out, and live a life of luxury for the rest of your years.

...granted, there are some weird rumors running around. Nobody's seen the curator of the museum in weeks, and there have been odd rumors of disappearing staff and 'strange figures' in the windows of the museum at night.

Eh, it's probably nothing worth worrying about. Let's rob the place blind, yeah?

---

This roleplay is a party-style 'adventure', played by a group of thieves attempting to rob an arcane museum. The location is a town known as Meade, a reasonably wealthy city that isn't a major metropolitan area in its own right, but neighbors the nearby Deln metropolis. It's best described as a semi-suburban sort of locale, an upper-crust town with a storied history that most cities of said kind don't generally have.

The world is best described as "modern fantasy". Technological capacity is roughly on par with that of the current day. The most clear departures from the current day we live in are the existences of "magic" and of nonhuman sapients.

Nonhuman sapients include the standard fare such as goblins, trolls, weird-bird-people, and the like. If they're a standard fantasy trope or a playable DnD race, for instance, they're probably fair game.

Some of you might ask "why is this just 'our world but with magic' when magic would have irreparably altered how technology evolved" and things like that. These are perfectly valid questions, but as the theme of the roleplay isn't based around these questions, I'm going to say "don't think too hard about it".

Player characters are thieves, members of the criminal underground, of decent experience. Whether or not specific player characters are acquainted prior to the start of the roleplay is up to the individual players. Player characters can be of nonhuman sapient races, but exercise common sense; something like a goblin or even a troll is fine (if you can justify how a troll is supposed to be a thief, at least). Something like "supreme archdemon" is obviously not. If you want to check a character idea with me before writing up a sheet for it, that's recommended.

Player characters should be mostly mundane. Some magical knowledge is fine, but magic is less of a standard vocation and more like something you'd need a Masters to get a half-decent job for. If you were some sort of genius magic-user, you probably wouldn't be a thief.

The roleplay will begin with the player characters having just finished breaking into the museum, and we'll run from there. The player amount I'm shooting for is 3-4. I do reserve the right to decline people arbitrarily if I think their characters don't mesh with the theme of the roleplay, etc etc, standard stuff.

---

Magic System

This won't be directly relevant, but as a brief explanation of how magic operates in this setting, it's best termed as the 'realization of stories'. In essence, magic-users are people who create 'stories' called magic formulas, and by focusing what's called 'magical energy' through these formulas, are able to enact an effect on the world. While it's not a perfect analogy, you could consider designing a story in this way as similar to writing a thesis paper, using observation of the world and human understanding to create a system by which something can happen.

An example would be a magic-user who creates a story of 'lead becoming gold', the magic formula being an array inscribed onto a scroll. By understanding that story and running magical energy through the scroll in line with that understanding, enacting the story and converting lead into gold becomes possible.

A magic-user is then one who fulfills three criteria: Capability to write stories (design magic formulas), capability to channel magical energy (manipulation of their own life force), and capability to understand stories (read magic formulas).

This is the 'layman's understanding' of magic. The system itself is a fair bit more complicated, but that's unlikely to be relevant during the roleplay proper, and the player characters won't be aware of information beyond these basics.

Stats

There are six statistics to evaluate your character, listed below. These are basically all conglomerate stats; don't think of this as 1:1 tabletop stuff or get over-serious about the stats. They'll matter far less than they would in a tabletop thing.

You have 60 points to distribute freely among these as you see fit. These do not take into account racial bonuses, which will be discussed during the application process, so design these without that in mind.

As approximate benchmarks:
-A value below 5 means that you are anywhere from outright crippled to incredibly incompetent in that department.
-A value of 10 places you at the average for a healthy adult.
-A value of 15 demonstrates significant performance above the general populace.
-A value of 20 is enough to hold some state records.
No stat may surpass a value of 20.

Strength: Physical strength, across grip strength, striking force, and all of that. Also affects things like how much you can carry.

Dexterity: Nimbleness, reaction time, movement speed, and the like.

Constitution: How much of a beating you can take, how hardy your body is, and so on.

Intelligence: Problem-solving ability and memory.

Charisma: Social skills, rhetoric, and presence. Tangentially affects things like willpower.

Magical Potential: Talent for magic, affecting one's innate ability to understand magic formulas and control over personal life force. Can also be considered the equivalent of the willpower stat, due to the latter of those. Not related to level of magical knowledge, since in that regard, you should all have basically none.

Character Sheet

Name: I'd hope I don't need to explain this one.

Age: While the setting is modern fantasy in nature, please don't app some 3000-year old immortal freak.

Gender: Don't make this complicated.

Species: Humans are the obvious choice, but the standard fantasy fare are generally acceptable, with the caveat that they must have sufficiently humanoid bodies/attributes. Also don't try and be that guy who tries to app a god or something.

Appearance: Yes, you can use a picture. Yes, you can put it at the top of the sheet with a little italicized quote centered under it.

Personality: Self-explanatory, I'd hope.

History: Remember, your character is, through one means or another, a thief. Whether they're a conniving musician who pilfers wallets while performing or one of those guys who dresses in all black and breaks into secure buildings, this needs to be a factor. Similarly, they need to be acquainted with the employer of this heist in some way, shape, or form, which means they're probably pretty experienced with at least something of a name for themselves. Please don't make them some "nationally renowned thief legend".

Stats

Strength:

Dexterity:

Constitution:

Intelligence:

Charisma:

Magical Potential:

Skills: This includes everything you can think of that distinguishes the character in what they can do, including learned abilities like combat or stealth techniques, racial abilities like how an orc would likely have high strength and hardy skin. Limit of five.

Equipment: Things carried on the person for the job. Must be mundane in nature. Don't go crazy here.

Artifact: A magical item. You're allowed to have one of these; however, the condition is that it needs to be something 'useless'. An example could be something like an Everlasting Gobstopper. If it's something that clearly will benefit you in a fight, I won't allow it. This is mostly a little fun thing for flavor. That said, if you do think of some roundabout, batshit way to actually use it during the roleplay, more power to you, but that shouldn't be your goal.

Museum Maps

To be added once the players receive maps IC.

Sleight at the Museum (Modern Fantasy, Thieves in a Magic Museum)

Good to have you~ The OOC will be up later today.

My ideal number for this is 3-4 players to keep things moving (reasonably) briskly. So, if we do get applications exceeding that number, I'll be picking who I think are the best fits, rather than it being first-come first-served.

With that said, if you don't get a slot, I may reach out to you to see if you'd be interested in helping out on the NPC side.

Basically, still accepting applicants, so don't be shy~

Sleight at the Museum (Modern Fantasy, Thieves in a Magic Museum)

Ok then
I’ll be something else

@unicorgi

I, uh, not to be rude, but I think you might have misread the opening post.

The nature of the player characters is outlined there.

Chalk me up as interested for perhaps a round of playing a miscreant.

@Fehnek

Got it, you hapless degenerate.

Sleight at the Museum (Modern Fantasy, Thieves in a Magic Museum)

I’d be interested in being one of those “strange figures”

@unicorgi

That's more to be managed on the GM side, apologies~

Sleight at the Museum (Modern Fantasy, Thieves in a Magic Museum)

Welcome to Meade, recently voted by the annual Archmages Magazine survey as the best town for those seeking to start a career in the up-and-coming arcane industry.

You are a member of the criminal underground, an art thief whose eyes are set on the Museum of the History and the Arcane Arts that is slated to open next weekend. More specifically, you've been hired by a past client to steal the crown jewel of the museum and magnum opus of the legendary painter Hel'AvRen von Entray-Yezediah: The Divine Silence. Of course, if you manage to get away with anything in addition to The Divine Silence, your client is happy to take it off your hands as well, but they're after The Divine Silence first and foremost.

Put simply, pull this job off, and you'll be one of the richest people in the country.

Of course, a priceless painting such as The Divine Silence will no doubt have plenty of security around it, even if the museum's yet to open. Naturally, your client has seen that as cause to hire a few other thieves; maybe you know them from past jobs, maybe not, but you're all professionals, so there shouldn't be an issue there. Everyone gets an even cut of the final turnout. Break into the museum, steal the painting, grab what other things you can, get out, and live a life of luxury for the rest of your years.

...granted, there are some weird rumors running around. Nobody's seen the curator of the museum in weeks, and there have been odd rumors of disappearing staff and 'strange figures' in the windows of the museum at night.

Eh, it's probably nothing worth worrying about. Let's rob the place blind, yeah?

A Certain Eucatastrophic Apocrypha (Index/Railgun Roleplay)

Claudius Caligula Westerson

Zero Degrees Lounge, School District 15
@Breo@liferusher@Zelosse@Jacky

After placing his order, Claudius's eyes flitted about the wretched establishment. The decor, the disgusted looks of the employees, the genuine confidence of the eldritch manager, the girl who had placed the same order as Claudius himself before fleeing, the two who had entered and attempted to order normal pizzas from this profane 'other world'. His gaze stopped for a moment, though, as he saw the aforementioned girl return to the establishment, a boy who looked to be a touch older than her in tow.

His observation sharpened, eyes narrowing slightly. That boisterous glint that had been in his eyes since he entered the pizzeria diminished slightly as he looked behind himself, as though he was trying to dissect each of the siblings' movements. He felt his own expression tighten further, unsaid thoughts running through his mind.

"Brother, why don't you apply somewhere else? You must know that you will not get accepted there, but I'm sure you could make it into a fantastic engineering program, if you applied."

"Gahaha! Don't worry, Takako, this is all according to the Great Plan of a hero!"

Just as quickly as it had appeared, though, that momentary firmness of expression faded. That brash glint reentered his eyes, that self-assured smirk plastered itself back across his face, that gait straightened itself once again. Hopefully the pair of siblings had not noticed his observation. Claudius Caligula Westerson reasserted himself; his sidekicks were no doubt watching, after all.

...In theory, every existence possesses a "grudge".

A child's grudge to be stronger, a fetus's grudge to be born, a friend's grudge to shoulder the pain of another. In order to be a sapient being without a single grudge, you must be an impossible being. You must be something that has glimpsed what mankind calls "Enlightenment", something that has seen the truth of the world and escaped its laws as a result.

And yet...how did it go?

The name is unfamiliar, the feelings are unfamiliar, but the words, the words can still be felt. Like looking through a pane of misted glass, like a song without a melody, like a declaration for the end of an era.

For after all, a grudge does not have to be hatred, it simply has to be will. It is a part of the soul given form as the tether between the soul and the mind. It is a wish, a prayer that extends outwards to infinity despite knowing that nothing besides its speaker will answer it.

Two existences stood in opposition, two bounded selves in their own conceptual worlds. Between the two beings, possessions changed, one's became another's. A distortion of meaning, a fundamental change in nature.

Currency to coffee. Coffee to currency.

-And just as quickly as it had begun, it had ended. A cataclysm that lasted for an instant from the outside and an eternity from the inside. The two existences terminated their tether, and one let out a laugh that sealed the very heavens. Head bending backwards in an angle that was obtuse but behaved as though it was acute, he roared for the end of innocence.

"Gahaha! Excellent! Even in a profanity such as this, there may be a salvation found! And the one who locates it, the one who discovers that very path towards an ephemeral dream, can be none other than the hero himself!"

Screaming nonsensical things, the self-proclaimed protagonist proceeded to down his coffee in a single go, likely scalding his mouth in the process.

Oh, huh, it actually tasted good.

Go figure.

A Certain Eucatastrophic Apocrypha (Index/Railgun Roleplay)

G o t t e m